Rates & Barrels - DJ LeMahieu stays with the Yankees, Toronto as a fit for Trevor Bauer, international free agency, and MLB's pursuit of the sticky ball

Episode Date: January 15, 2021

Eno, DVR & Britt discuss DJ LeMahieu's new deal with the Yankees, the Blue Jays' struggle to land a top free agent, the potential fit with Trevor Bauer, Theo Epstein as a consultant to Commissioner Manfred, sticky stuff, and more. Rundown 1:02 DJ LeMahieu Stays in the Bronx with a Six-Year Deal 5:10 The Blue Jays Take Another Silver Medal 9:41 International Free Agency Opens 19:13 Is MLB Relegation a Pipe Dream? 26:05 Theo Epstein Moves Into Consulting Role for Commissioner Manfred 33:56 Considering The Double Hook Idea for the DH Rule 38:46 Learning from the NFL-Nickelodeon Simulcast 43:20 Pine Tar & The Quest for the Sticky Ball 51:04 Does Owner Wealth Matter with Respect to a Team's Payroll? Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper e-mail: [e-mail] Subscribe to The Athletic for just $3.99/month to start at theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So let's be clear. When it comes to shipping internationally, can I provide trade documents electronically? Mm-hmm. The answer is FedEx. Okay. But what about estimating duties and taxes on my shipments? How do I find all the... Also FedEx. Impressive. Is there a regulatory specialist I can ask about? FedEx. Oh. But let's say that... FedEx.

What? FedEx. Thanks. No more questions. Always your answer for international shipping. FedEx. What? FedEx. Thanks. No more questions. Always your answer for international shipping. FedEx, where now meets next. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's January 15, 2021. Derek Van Ryper, you know, Sarah Sprit-Giroli here with you. A loaded episode again on this Friday.

DJ LeMayhue staying put with a pretty long-term deal to stay in New York. The international free agent signing window, which was moved, is actually open right now. So tons of signings there. Turns out Theo Epstein didn't take long to find a new role in baseball. He's going to serve as a consultant to Commissioner Rob Manfred. So we'll talk about some things that he might be working on in the upcoming year. And I'm sure other stuff's going to happen. We've got some possible free agent signings simmering on the back burner. And I've got a few mailbag questions we may get to on this episode. We have not been getting to a lot of mailbag questions lately, though, because things are actually happening. This was the best possible fit, staying with the Yankees. The terms are six years and $90 million, so a long deal with a reasonably low AAV.

Apparently, the Jays offered four for $78, according to John Heyman. So I'm a little surprised that that wasn't enough to pry DJ LeMayhew away from the Yankees. But from the start, was I just underestimating how badly he wanted to stay in New York? You know, was it just the foregone conclusion that this was going to happen and it was only a matter of time before they get the terms right?

You know, four for 78 and six for 90. If those are the two competing deals, you know, to some extent, there was some, you know, if those are the two competing deals, to some extent, there was some scuttlebutt that $90 million was the number, and that he just wanted the $90 million. For the Yankees, that means spread it out over to over six, then the average annual value, which is what counts against the luxury tax, is lower.

And he gets his $90 million. It's his last probable payday. So that's maybe what's going on in LeMay who's head financially other than going back to the Yankees. Yes, there's a theoretical idea that if you took the 4 for 78, you could get more than 2 for 12 at the end.

But that's theoretical. If you think that you may retire at the end of this deal no matter what, which I think if you look across baseball is a very possible thing that this is his last deal, then you just want the biggest number. You don't actually care how many years it has on it. Even if you get cut in the last year or two, you still got your $90 million. I mean, that's the benefit of having um you know a guaranteed contract so i think that yes four for 78 from the jays was a represented deal in some ways maybe even better um if you think he could get another deal

in the end he took the deal with the most money on the table yeah i think too that like that like I've heard from agents that guys, some guys just don't want to play in Toronto. Don't want to move their families, don't want to uproot. There is some significant barriers to certain players when they're looking at deals that involve going to Toronto. And I think if he had taken that four-year deal, was he going to sign at 36 years old for significant money? No, right? Everything we know about baseball screams that that's not going to sign at 36 years old for significant money no right everything we know about baseball screams that that's not going to happen even two for 12 might be no yeah that's no guarantee he might be a one and four guy at that point so like to me like you look at it you can look at it two

ways like one this is really good for the yankees because they're paying him really a low aav they only have 15 million dollars count against that luxury tax. So now they can make other moves here. And I think they will. I think this was the domino they needed to fall to set up their off season. But two, on the flip side of that, like if you're DJ LeMay,

you're like, you guys said like, he's still getting that money, that six years, that guaranteed comfort now. And it doesn't really matter to him that he's only making 3 million more coming off of a career year, right? The average annual value is only 3 million more, which to us sounds like a ton of money. To the people listening, it sounds like a ton of money. In baseball land, the players union can't be happy that a guy coming off a career year

is only getting as a free agent slightly more per year but i think you have to do what's right in this kind of a climate and for me that this deal seems to work out for both sides it was very clear that he wanted to go back to the yankees because i've heard from other clubs now that are like whoa if you knew lemay who could be got for 15 mil a year or other would other teams have gotten involved. Right. It seems very quickly. Like they agreed on the, the 90 million and then they stretched out the years because I think if other teams had known they would have gotten in on this,

like, okay, I'll take DJ the Mayhew for 15 million a year. Right. It seems it's fascinating. The Jays were prepared to pay him 15 million a year. The Jays are like that, that that always a bridesmaid, never a bride type of thing. It's so far this winter.

I mean, does Springer fall to them? I had to say that. That was a feeling for me when everyone was saying, oh, they're going to spend, they're going to spend. I was like, they're going to be in on everybody, but I don't know who they come away with. I just don't know. I just want to prom date come away with. I just don't know. I just thought it was going to be Liam Hendricks. I really thought it was going to be Liam Hendricks, though. I thought he was their guy that they would actually get, and it was going to be a good fit. And then Liam

Hendricks got a ridiculous deal. I mean, Liam Hendricks got a ridiculous deal. That's a big deal. He is now the second highest paid reliever in baseball. Yeah. Springer is still out there. And the Mets have to go in the tax to get him. I don't think they're going there yet. I think they could be a team in the future if we still have a tax in a few years that they would be more willing to do it to go all in if they feel like they're absolutely ready. It's been a couple of years of trying to win and not getting there.

I could see them being the kind of team that's willing to do that. It would surprise me if they did it right away in year one with Steve Cohen owning the team. But I look at the Jays and I'm like, Springer fits there for sure. It would just kind of bump Teoscar Hernandez or Lourdes Gurriel into the rotating DH role. Yeah, you'd put one of those guys in the DH spot, probably Teoscar Hernandez.

Lourdes Gurriel is actually a good defender. It might mean you have to play Vlad at third, though. Right. You'd have to probably consider something like that. I don't know. This is a weird Jays team. I was on them because of Alejandro Kirk yesterday and everyone thinking he's their DH right now.

I don't think a guy that has 25 career plate appearances who's really a catcher is a DH for a team like Toronto. So Springer's still a possibility. Rowdy. My man Rowdy is their DH. Rowdy for now, yeah. Rowdy. I like Rowdy.

But anyway, I look at the Jays. I think you're right. They're running out of splashy things to do. Are they ever really even linked to Bauer? Bauer. Is that a realistic possibility? It wouldn't mean a big deal for them. They need pitching.

It would be a big deal. It fits for sure. They absolutely could use a frontline workhorse starter. Who couldn't, right? But they're definitely one of those teams. You look at the back end of what they have. They've got injuries. They've got guys that can't get through the lineup a third time. They've got young guys they're trying to break in. So Bauer would ease a lot of their concerns about their starting rotation as a whole. But

that seems pretty far-fetched to me. Anybody that I previously thought would go to the Jays was Springer or lower on the free agent rankings. I didn't think they could get above that level. Yeah, I do think Bauer is an interest, though, for Toronto because a lot of agents think that's where he's going to end up. Really? I also think there's a faction of people. Trevor Bauer is very polarizing, right? I think people would be thrilled if Trevor Bauer was all of a sudden

in Canada, which seems like a faraway land to some people. I do. Just further away. Like, let's call a spade a spade. There are people who are really done with this long, dragged out process. The tweets won't go away if he goes to Canada, though. He'll still get still service. He'll still be able to be on YouTube.

But there are, and I've heard this, there are teams that are concerned about signing him because they don't want their conversations to end up on YouTube. Because they're not sure how much they can really kind of wrangle him in. And I think that's a fair thing. There's a weird music parallel here. I have a little bit of affinity for Neo Soul. And there's this guy named Cody Chestnut who used to he's done some songs with the Roots and he's a really good singer but he's

a very brash human being a little bit Bower-esque and he told all of the record companies that wanted to sign him to a record deal that he had to be allowed to record the interview process um and record the record the the the the contract signing and so he didn't he never got a contract yeah if you uh disrupt the system too much the system just

sort of refuses yeah right i don't think that's gonna happen with bauer but it's a it's a good point about how there might just be some teams that don't want that's going to happen with Bauer, but it's a good point about how there might just be some teams that don't want to work with him for the reasons that Britt outlined. Thinking about today, if you spend any time on Twitter and you follow a bunch of baseball writers, it is a complete mess because today is the day the teams are reaching arbitration agreements and the international free agent deadline, which is normally July 2nd, that window was moved and it just opened. So we're seeing a ton of players signing.

And these are guys that are future stars in many cases. The biggest name, I think, based on preliminary reading and research that I've done is Christian Hernandez, who is headed to the Cubs. He got a $3 million signing bonus, has the baby A-Rod nickname slash comp. But this is different for a few other reasons, Britt. We're seeing some teams that haven't really been as involved in this process in years past, making a pretty big splash in this year's international free agent market. Yeah, I think chief among them has to be the Orioles, who for years, guys, I used to hear about how they had one international scout,

and he would just like kind of sit cluelessly in the stands wearing all orange, and the rest of the scouts would kind of laugh at him. Like, what are you doing here? The Orioles aren't going to do anything. It was just like nonsense. Didn't their owner like actually even come out and say he didn't agree with it? Yes.

And so what Mike Elias has done and deserves credit for is the fact that he has gotten them to commit. One signing. Well, they have 17 that they've agreed to today. Okay, good. They agreed to 17 players today. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So bite your tongue, know no but no it is

water it is definitely he did the quantity thing right because he doesn't have any of the top like five or six it's definitely more quantity but the for a team that never committed anything to sign 17 players i think yeah no that's definitely you know it's really a big deal um also their first ever seven figure international signing so they've committed that's definitely different. It's really a big deal. Also, their first ever seven-figure international signing. So they've committed. That's a seven figures. I mean, we're getting into the millions here. Michael Hernandez.

You know, Michael Hernandez and also catcher Samuel Basaldo. God, I hope I'm saying that right. So those were the two bigger signings. But Michael Elias called it a landmark day. And I think it certainly is for an organization that, as we have talked about, is tanking and is going to have to not miss on anybody that they're drafting and signing. So it's fascinating to look at.

There's certainly a lot of clubs that are taking this more seriously than other clubs. But what kind of sucks is they moved this date, right? It used to be in July. And now it seems like there's so much other stuff going on in baseball but these are dreams coming true for a lot of these guys a lot of these guys are getting good money do they move it because of covet or did they move it because it's structured it's structurally makes a little more sense now because now they can go play baseball you know like it was kind of weird in july they had to like

join teams that are already playing you know what i mean like they had to be kind of weird in July. They had to join teams that are already playing. You know what I mean? They had to be kind of sorted through around. I guess it was tied to the draft or something. Yeah, some of it was COVID related because you weren't allowed to scout and go see these guys to some extent. Last year was kind of a wash, right?

So, I mean, there is some big money here. Pedro Leon, $4 million to the Astros. The Nationals handed out their biggest um bonus ever as well uh they ended up getting a short stop out of the dominican republic they signed 11 players today they've done a really really good job under johnny de poiglia after huge scandal that they had there uh previously but armando cruz uh was kind of their top five prospect guy that they were able to get. A lot of shortstops.

A lot of outfielders in that top list. Do you guys notice that? Another thing I noticed, though, is it's interesting to look at the top signings by money and look at the names on the teams. Cubs, Rays, Astros, Dodgers, Blue Jays,

A's, Rays, Astros, Dodgers, Blue Jays, A's, Rays again. They had two guys combined for $4.8 million. I think there's still an edge here. I think there's still teams that haven't bought all the way in and teams that have bought all the way in and the teams that have bought all the way in have an extra pipeline of talent. I wonder if this is going to be part of the game in the long run. Are we ever going to reach a point where the first-year player draft also includes international players?

Instead of having the bonus system as it is and this deadline with kind of a free-for-all, are we going to get to a point where a draft process is utilized to determine which teams actually go after these players? Because in some ways, this is better. Players can choose the best fit for themselves and figure it out from there. But in other ways, it's not the cleanest process either, right? I mean, there's corruption in international free agency that brings some downsides as well. So what's your guys' sense in terms of the long-term viability of international free agency? Is this something we will continue to see long into the future, or is it something

that could possibly change with these players eventually being a part of the draft process? You know, it's a mess. You know, it's a mess. The current system has its total flaws. I mean, you know, there's these there's this corruption on the team level in terms of, you know, making under the table promises, the sort of stuff that got copy John Coppola banned from the Atlanta Braves. Atlanta Braves. That stuff's still going on. There's also the corruption on the other side where you've just got these Buscones who, you know, just they're all they're trying to do is amass as much talent as possible. So they're making promises. They're doing under the table things. So it's a little bit of a wild, wild west scenario. And yeah, you could see you could try to do something to get rid of a lot of that corruption. The problem, though, is that an international draft, A, could drive those salaries, those bonuses down, could drive those salaries down for those players and end up with them getting less money. And B, every country has a different situation. So you can't just put all the countries together in one international draft because the Japanese players have NPB there,

the national Nippon baseball that has their own rules. Japan will say, no, we want our own rules in this international draft. And Korea would say, no, we want our own rules in this international draft. And so basically every country will try to carve out their own rules and carve out themselves out in this international draft. And so basically every country will try to carve out their own rules and carve themselves out of this international draft because they have a system they like or whatever it is. So it's really a difficult situation. And I fear that baseball will kind of unilaterally kind of come down

and be like, this is the thing. We have an international draft, and it sucks, and it pushes player salaries down more, and there's less money going to needy populations, and there are more draconian laws, more draconian rules in place, and it'll screw some country or another, right? There will be some country that's going to be totally screwed

by the international draft. But as it is now, it's weird too. You got people moving to Puerto Rico and moving to the Dominican Republic away from America. Like Alex Reyes, I think, moved away from America so that he could be part of the bonus system instead of the regular draft. And that's kind of weird.

It's fascinating. It's some good points. And then also you've got like areas like the Bahamas where I would live in a heartbeat is now becoming like a hotbed. Some of these areas for talent are becoming like, I don't know, the Bahamas is becoming like an up and coming area. And you wonder over the next few years, like what happens with that? By the way, I will volunteer to cover the bahamas for us exclusively i'm rooting for jamaica to to

to come on i i got i got family in jamaica i got places i can stay i i got i got people in jamaica if jamaican baseball becomes a thing please send me to scout it i'm trying to remember if i don't think i've ever seen a prospect from Jamaica in the years that I've followed baseball. Christian Robinson is the most prominent player from the Bahamas, right? The current Diamondbacks prospect. He's kind of part of this next generation. Luscious, not luscious.

That's right. Sorry, Lucius Fox. Yeah, Jamaican baseball is defined by like Chili Davis, basically, and Devon White. Those are the two most prominent Jamaicans. Justin Masterson was born there because his parents were a little bit like my situation. My mom was running a restaurant and a grill. That's why I was born there. Lived there for a long time.

And Masterson's parents, I think, were doing some sort of missionary work. But that's Jamaican baseball right there. There's three or four of us. Three or four, yeah. I didn't realize Devon White was from Jamaica. That's really cool. And Chili Davis, yeah, that's going back a little ways. But I don't know.

One of those places. It wouldn't surprise you to see future big leaguers coming from there again if they can find a way to build some more infrastructure for the game. I hope it's organic and not just Major League Baseball going there to purely mine talent. It would be nice if it were actually a good collective thing. Things don't often work out that way. Want visibly glowing skin in 14 days? good collective thing. Things don't often work out that way. for a rich indulgent experience. Treat your senses with NuoLite Indulgent Moisture Body Wash. Buy it today at major retailers. Peloton Bike, Bike Plus, Tread, Row, Guide, or App. There are thousands of classes and over 50 Peloton instructors

ready to support you from the beginning. Remember, doing something is everything. Rent the Peloton Bike or Bike Plus today at onepeloton.ca slash bike slash rentals. All access memberships separate. Terms apply. We had some follow-ups on the anti-tanking conversation from last week. Relegation came up in a few different emails. I was bugging you guys about it on Slack as well. It's not an original idea from the last week or anything like that.

People have written about it for the Hardball Times. I've seen other pieces about it prior to that. And I think the one thing it really does is you can kind of mash together things that the league has done in the past, right? You know, you've mentioned that when Major League Baseball has had financial trouble in the past, expansion is soon to follow. We saw Ken Rosenthal's piece last week about the league being reluctant to expand right now in part because of stadium concerns with the Rays and the A's and a few other factors as well. But if you have a relegation system, you need more teams that can actually be promoted. You have to kind of change the structure of the upper levels of the minor leagues a little bit. But you could have this sort of partial expansion, right? You could take your Nashvilles, your Portlands, even places like Vancouver where they have independent baseball.

You can take these cities that want big league teams, have them pay something similar to a franchise fee, and have them in the AAA level competing for a chance to be promoted. And then you have your bottom feeder teams in the big leagues going down to that lower league. Now, it gets sticky here because anything you suggest for Major League Baseball that is a big structural change has to make the owners more money. And my proposed solution for this, which I'm sure is full of holes, is that if you have relegation, if you take the 30-team pie that we have right now, and you add two teams to split all the national TV money, that makes everyone's share smaller. That's another reason why current owners might not want expansion right now. You don't want to cut the pie into 32 pieces instead of 30.

If you have some relegation, you could make your top league 24 or 26 or 28 teams in any given year. You could make that the new normal, and you're cutting the pie into fewer pieces. So you've enticed most of the owners with a bigger piece of revenue sharing while squeezing out underperforming teams temporarily. They have a chance to win and come back up after a year. And I think it's interesting because it puts baseball, at least more competitive baseball, in markets where we'd like to see it. It's interesting because you'd have teams trying to fight off relegation who might be adding players at the trade deadline. Their games would

be more dramatic. You could have even a postseason bracket with the bottom feeding teams to see who stays and who ends up going down. I think you could sell those rights as playoff games or near playoff games. And you kind of have an expanded playoff feel without expanding the actual field of the postseason. So you're not watering down the top of your game as well. So it has merit. But am I still just out of my mind just dreaming on something that, frankly, will never happen with baseball? Yes.

I have to dance around a little bit. I have an A1 coming up on expansion. So I've got a big piece coming on expansion. And I just did an interview with JC Bradbury, an economic professor at Kennesaw State, has written about the, you know, just the finances of baseball before in the past. And here's something really interesting he said, which is that with the cutting of all those minor league teams, there is actually a larger threat than ever before that another league could pop up. That an actual sort of professional baseball league that people watched on TV and had quality players could pop up and become somewhat of a competition to baseball, to Major League Baseball.

And the only way that I could see this working is if you take some of those teams that are suing baseball right now, like Fresno and Trenton, and you create that sort of, at least it has to be what, 10, 12 teams, but you probably, if you take the expansion teams, you could get to four, six, eight, maybe you can get to 10. If you had a 10 team league that was outside of the current minor league system, but also way better than independent leagues and also bigger towns than where independent leagues normally are. And you basically created a quadruple A league. Now you've got a quadruple A league that would either compete with baseball or baseball somehow consumes.

And how do they consume that? Either expansion and we reorganize minor league ball and all those teams that were suing us and stuff. Fresno, congratulations. You're now the triple A team for the Portland sea dogs or whatever they're called. And and and so on, right? Or possibly some sort of relegation scheme. The whole thing is what grows the entire pie, you know? Right.

And that, I think, was a little missing from this idea that, you know, expansion only is giving you present money and taking away from future money, right? The idea though is that expansion would grow the pie later. So you get money now and the pie is bigger later. So your 32 share, your 132nd share is actually bigger than your 130th share now because you grew the pie. You got to a new market. You added new people. And that's the dream you're chasing with expansion. So I gave away most of my piece there. Whoops.

But it'll be a fun piece. There's lots of cool data, really cool visualizations, a lot of cool stuff. I've been working on it for a long time. That's coming up in a week or two. But I do think that there is a moment now where some of these things are possible. In crisis, there is opportunity. And the crisis here is not only that they lost – I don't want to say lost,

but that there was a revenue downfall last year because of COVID. But also that they have these minor league teams that have been shut out. Fresno is suing Major League Baseball. That is actually kind of a crisis. That is a crazy thing. Yeah, that's going to cost the owners money, regardless of whether or not they win or lose. That's going to cost the owners money, regardless of whether or not they win or lose, right? That's going to be expensive litigation. So that's problematic, especially in the wake of the season they just had. hopefully starting to pay more attention to. And I'm wondering, with Theo Epstein now moving into a consulting role to Commissioner Manfred, if these are the kinds of things that are

more realistic now. I think maybe Theo can bridge the gap towards the dreamers, like us, about how baseball in a utopia would work to how can actually work, but still make the owners a lot of money, right? Theo could maybe be that kind of bridge potentially. And we'll see. I mean, I know one thing that was mentioned, Sahad of Sharma had a really good piece about the move and pace of play with respect to the number of balls in play seemed to be a really important issue to Theo. And he pointed out the difference between winning games and what is aesthetically pleasing, right? He took a little bit of accountability in this current wave of GMs and the way the game is analyzed. And we may have made a game that's more efficient in how you win, but it's not a very fun game to watch. So the interesting thing here is

that he pointed out three minutes and 30 seconds in between balls in play is the average right now. His hope is to find a way to drop that number to two minutes or less, which is going to require some pretty significant alterations to the game. Pitch clock to me.

Yeah, pitch clock. You know what happens in those three minutes? You know what happens in those three minutes? You know what happens in those three minutes. Everyone looks at their phone. If they're at home. That's not good. Or if they're at the ballpark, they get lost in their phone. So, yeah, I'm on board with the pitch clock.

I just had a cool tweet here from Mike Petriello. He lists a bunch of them. I'm just going to cool tweet here from Mike Petriello. He lists a bunch of them. I'm just going to list them here. Let's not make the whole episode about it maybe, but I think I mostly agree with these. There's one thing I want to say at the end. So he says, yep, this doesn't have to be hard. Pitch clock, lower the mound, deaden the ball,

limit the number of pitchers, shrink the strike zone, don't ban the shift, universal DH, happy times. So it's a lot of stuff. And my only thing is that I would take a kind of, I would slow the roll a little bit and just try one or two a year. But I would try one or two a year because baseball would tell you a lot in one year. You know, like if you did a pitch clock and just waited a year, you would know a lot more about the effect of the pitch clock at the end of the year.

Right? I think you would almost know most of what the effect of the pitch clock would be. And so you can say, okay, it did this, this, and this. We like two of those things. So the next thing should be, oh, it did too many injuries. You know what I mean? So then, okay, let's do something like limit the number of pitchers or, you know. So like put, that's my list.

I like most of the things on that list, but I wouldn't want to deaden the ball and shrink the strike zone at the same time and then find out, whoops, like there's no offense. Too much. Yeah, right? I agree. Like, oh, we got a bunch of singles and all the homers are gone.

That kind of sucks too. I mean, to me, the biggest thing that you do that keeps the game the same is you cut the dead time. To me, the pitch clock is the biggest thing. It's just straight dead time.

It takes forever. We complain during the playoff show all the time about how you could go to your fridge, get a drink in between pitches. It's too much. You could shave an hour off games and then the games feel more active

because there's less dead time. And to me, that's just the easiest solution without fundamentally changing where the pitcher's mound is, what we're doing to some of these rules. I think you just start there because it seems like the easiest thing to do. Pitchers need to work quick.

They worked quick for years and years. This is a new thing now. Go watch a baseball game from 20, 30 years ago. No one is taking that long between pitches. And we talked about it. You know why? As a lifter, you know if you take more time between reps, you can do bigger stuff.

So they're taking more time so they can throw harder. Yes. And so a pitch clock could do something about velo which we've like sort of engineered velo so that's why i'm saying like do pitch clock before you lower the mound because the pitch clock might actually do enough of with the velo to reduce strikeouts and then you don't have to necessarily lower the mound so uh that's why i would do them one in a row also the other the other thing I can say about pitch clock is they've been doing it in the minors. Have you been to a minor league game? You don't notice it. There's a number out there. You know, the number goes down.

You know. And yes, there are ways to game it. You can throw over to first. You can throw over to first. If it's getting too down low, you can throw it first. Step off the rubber. Yes, you can game it. I understand that.

But generally, the effect will be to be faster because generally you don't want to step off the mound and you'll be aware of it and after a while it's in your head and then you're like okay i have 10 seconds left and let me let me get this pitch off right and then all the records stay semi the same because i think people are really against like oh moving the mound or doing things that would fundamentally change how we view stats and records i think the pitch clock to me is the easiest like let the least amount of barriers i guess um that's just that's just how i feel about it strikes on stuff we've done a lot before too right yeah strikes on stuff you can play with the strike zone it's okay i'm just saying the one thing about strike zone is i you can try and model what will happen and i don't think that you know exactly what will happen

you know you think like you'll shrink it and there'll be more there'll be more walks or hits or you know like it'll be like oh just a lot more walks in the same amount of hits you know like that'd be crappy i don't want to see more walks walks or whatever you think of strikeouts walks or walks are boring walks are boring yeah mean, it's a long buildup to a pretty small payoff, right? At least a single, like, hey, you dribble it through the infield or you flared it over the shortstop's head. There's something there to be excited about. There's some drama, but especially if you're at a game

and you're not sitting particularly close to the plate and you can't even really see close balls and strikes. I love the guys out in the bleachers are like, boo, that wasn't a strike. You're like, dude, what? You're 480 feet away, and you've had four old styles. You don't know where the zone is, dude. I don't even know what pitch that was.

I got into an argument with a former player when we were sitting out in the seats. I got into a really bad argument that I feel badly about to this day about whether or not people could tell pitch types from the bleachers. And he was like, yeah, you can. He goes, that was a cutter.

I was like, the board said slider. He got so mad at me. He got so mad at me. He got so mad at me. And I was being a d***. I understand. But I think it's very hard to tell pitch type from the outfield. So I think that also devalues strikeouts

when you're at the game because you can't even be like, ooh, that was an amazing curveball. You're like, I think that was a curveball. There are certain places in the park where it's great to watch a pitcher's duel, but there are many more places in the park where it is not great to watch a pitcher's duel.

Yeah. Yeah, right behind home plate. And being at home is better. Right behind home plate is better than being at home. Right behind home plate is a great place to watch a great pitcher. And then there's all the other places in the stadium that cost a lot less. So if you're rich or you're a scout, you're covered.

Otherwise, you're better off watching pitchers' duels at home. And if you're going to go otherwise, just root for offense because at least you can see what's happening in front of you a lot more easily. I was kind of curious what you guys thought about the double hook idea. It was in Jason Stark's piece this week, and it's the idea that if you had universal DH, the DH would come out of the game when the starting pitcher comes out of the game.

You'd have some wrinkles where if that DH could play first base or the outfield, they could stay in the game and you could manipulate things that way, but you'd lose the DH spot when you take or the outfield. They could stay in the game and you could manipulate things that way. But you'd lose the DH spot when you take your starting pitcher out. And there was a quote in there. It was from, I think it was an anonymous AL GM or AL executive. And he hated it so much. It was just one of my favorite quotes of the year.

It was just one of my favorite quotes of the year. You're creating a show to address a problem that doesn't need addressing at all, which sums up so many side projects and random things that I've done in my adult life. It's perfect. It's a perfect quote. It is a little bit gimmicky, but the downside I think most people pointed out was imagine the great DHs, the David Ortiz's, even Nelson Cruz, if you want someone who's currently in the game, Jordan Alvarez, obviously a really good young DH. Imagine those players not being available at the end of the game because of this rule if you didn't have a defensive position that they could reasonably play. Maybe the counter argument to that is, well, maybe they should spend some time learning how to play first base or left field. Is it really that difficult for them to learn how to play one of those spots? But what were your general thoughts on that as kind of a compromise to universal DH?

I mean, what did you think about that, Britt brit you've seen a ton of al baseball before making the move to the nat so do you have a strong preference for universal dh or split rules like we've had i have the i like the universal dh i think what that gm said was correct because you guys think about how exciting it is late in the game when you put in a a guy who you know is capable or of ending the game, right? When you get to that Ortiz, that Cruz, those guys who are in there because they can hit. And I'm not talking pinch hitters because obviously that's a different scenario. But the DH to me just creates a lot of excitement, creates stronger lineups.

And as someone who's been in the NL now for two years after watching the AL for eight years very closely, I'm tired of watching pitchers hit. Most of them are terrible. It's not good entertainment at all. I think we need a universal rule. Jason's great. The article made me think. But absolutely not. It is creating a huge problem when you should just have the universal DH.

One thing that I don't like about it is just that it means that you'll never have a DH hit at the end of the game. Right. Unless they play defense and then someone else has to come out of the game. Again, the example with Cruz, that same AL executive said, well, if Cruz stays in the game and plays the outfield, then Max Kepler comes out of the game. You're just taking Max Kepler out. And this is probably happening in a scenario if you're losing,

especially now you're losing one of your best hitters or an above average hitter just because you had to take your pitcher out. Your pitcher had a bad day and now you lost a hitter, which makes it even harder to come back. Right.

Yeah, I don't know. I respect the idea to try and help uh kumbaya and come together on this but um i'm a little bit this is the one place where i'm a little bit just just do the dh man just do it yeah agreed the the pitchers do not train to hit anymore they they go they go years between plate appearances. Pitchers are not hitting in college in most places. Pitchers are not hitting in high school in most places.

At some point, you'll be branded a pitcher and you stop hitting. That's what happens for the largest population. If we're not training these guys, they're going to get worse and worse. They're only going to get hurt. They just look silly out there. And as good as Greinke and Bumgarner are,

they would be the very worst hitter having their very worst year if you actually played them all year. As it's pointed out in the piece, Adam Wainwright was quoted as one of three pitchers with an active career OPS over 500. Of course, Madison Bumgarner, Zach Greinke, and the others, but 500 for an OPS is not a bar to clear. If you're a 500 OPS hitter in the big leagues, you should probably be at high A or double A.

What are we doing here? So I'm ready for universal DH. I thought this was an interesting compromise, but one that was one step too far. I didn't like the ramifications of losing that spot. If you're going to have DHs, have DHs. And I think that's the better way to go. We did see something pretty interesting last weekend.

And I'm wondering what Major League Baseball might be able to learn from this. The NFL simulcasted the Bears-Saints playoff game that was on CBS onto Nickelodeon. They had slime cannons. They had a group of announcers that were a lot more fun. They had different explanations of rules for

kids that popped up. I think it was Young Sheldon that popped up to explain a rule. The question here is could MLB learn something from this? Could MLB find ways to package games that makes it more enticing for new fans and especially younger fans like this? I thought this was a pretty good step in the right direction for professional sports in general to think about shaping the future audience. Eno has kids, so I'm going to defer all my opinions.

Yeah, I missed, I didn't see the, I saw basically people talking about it on Twitter, but I didn't actually, I wasn't watching the football. Yeah. I sympathize with it because whenever I'm watching with my kids, I'm doing the same thing. I'm explaining rules and I mean, I haven't used a slime cannon yet, but I could see that keeping the attention of the younger one i think it's a

good idea um i don't think it necessarily needs to be something that every that there's always a simulcast but um you know like a once a year type thing um it's the same idea in a different with a different intended audience as the kind of stat cast simulcast right so i could see doing it on that level two or three times a year maybe having the all-star game you know or um one game of the world series or something something that like is a kind of momentous occasion on its own that might bring some kids in and say, hey, we've got another station simulcasting the kids version. I think that's a good idea. I think it's a good idea.

I mean, you can tell that baseball has a really old population in terms of, you know, you can look at the metrics or you can go to a ballpark. But one thing i wonder about with all this is that i just wonder sometimes if baseball itself is just a sport that you're going to like better um as you're older like it if the baseball itself is not um you it doesn't feature especially now that we've taken uh catcher uh confrontations, it doesn't feature those sort of raucous, crazy, you know, slow it down, violent, you know, moments like basketball and football, right? Like it just doesn't have that same energy. It has like more of a, you know, put a beer in your hand and hang

out for three hours attitude. So I know that's definitely not what the bigwigs at MLB want to hear. They want to grow the pie and get more young kids in there, and it's certainly possible. But I also watch my kids, and they seem a little bit more interested in other sports, and I'm giving them every opportunity to like any sport they like. I'm trying to maybe lead them a little bit away from football, but football's on sometimes they'll watch it.

And so far I think they've been, there's some nation interest in baseball, but also they like watching basketball a little bit more. I think. I still think a lot of this comes back to sports. You're able to play as a kid, right? How accessible is baseball in your community?

When I was a kid, little league baseball was a thing that just about every kid on the block played because it wasn't very expensive. It got you out of the house a couple times a week for practice and a couple times a week for games. Soccer is that more now, at least in my community. Yeah, it's kind of like rec soccer for the kids that are just getting started and then obviously travel and more competitive stuff comes in. But it just feels like the typical 10- to 12-year-old kid just plays Little League baseball has long disappeared. I mean, I was that age 25 years ago. That doesn't seem like a norm really at all,

and that's kind of part of the problem too. But I do think special events like the All-Star Game or a weekly game, the Saturday Game of the Week was also available. Simulcast on something. You could maybe pull something like this off and help attract a lot of younger viewers. But baseball's vibe is like watching golf on TV if I had to compare it to another sport. And I think it'd be really hard to get a kid to watch golf. I think it'd be almost impossible to get most kids to sit down and watch a golf

tournament on a Sunday afternoon. I want to talk about the Pine Tar story that you guys collaborated on. I came away with another question. We talk about Pine Tar quite a bit on this show, but do you guys have any sense, the more you've reported on this, is there any sense that Major League Baseball is ever actually going to start enforcing the rule? Or is it really more about the quest to have Rawlings develop a ball comparable to the Mizuno ball, the sticky ball that you wrote about to get Pintar out of the game that way? Are we just going to have Pintar until that ball is a reality? Is that where we're at? I think so.

I think the problem with enforcing it is look who's getting in trouble, right? These are star players. These are the marketable players. These are not the players that you want out of the game. You don't want a sport with no Justin Verlander and Garrett Cole and Max Scherzer or with them serving suspensions. I think you're ruining the product there. And as Eno has reported so diligently, you're talking about what around 70% of this league using something, right?

Not just Pintar. As Eno, who is our sticky stuff expert, there's all kinds of stuff that they are doing. And I think what is the incentive for MLB to enforce it? We talked about the game already moving slow. Do you really want the umpires to go out and check every pitch? Do you really want this stuff to happen? I don't think MLB does.

At least that's my sense. And that until they create a better ball where, you know, maybe these guys don't need it, but I don't know. Don't you feel like, you know, that even't you feel like even if they used the sticky ball, there'd still be guys tinkering with sticky stuff to get that extra spin rate? Haven't we kind of opened Pandora's box and there's no way to shut it? Yeah, I haven't put this in words. The podcast is interesting because you're allowed to kind of try things out.

I want to try this out. The impression I kind of get is that baseball is just trying to do enough so that if this ever blows up into a really big scandal, they can say, Oh, we've been doing all this stuff and we can implement it. If you guys are super pissed and they'll wait a couple of weeks. And if people are still pissed, it's more like the Astros, then they'll implement something you know so i think they're okay with us reporting on all the stuff they're doing um in light of the angel stuff uh but i don't know that they're actually going to do any of it

you know like yeah they're just you know they have the ball the atlantic league they gave it to them in spring training you know they they're they're doing a little bit a little bit but they're not i don't see this you know in our conversations with you know, they're doing a little bit, a little bit, but they're not. I don't see this, you know, in our conversations with, you know, league sources and team sources, I don't, I get more of a sense of like, eh, what are you going to do? You know, rather than, we're trying to do something, you know, it's more like, yeah, we're trying to do something, but whatever. So I think it's just a new norm, I guess. And that's the reason why people keep saying, well,

they legalize it. No, for the same reason, you know, just said they want to act like they're against it in case this ever becomes a point where they have to kind of stand up against it. And also there's no incentive for them to legalize it. So many other teams are using other things.

I just think this is going to be caught in this weird in between forever and you know now hitters are using pine tar as we reported putting it like god knows where on the bat does it help i don't know but they're studying that at driveline right now so we'll have results we'll have to talk about this at least one more time uh once driveline gets us their results they're studying whether or not spraying the bat gives you backspin and makes the ball carry more. But yeah, one thing is if they legalize a substance and they say, okay, you can use this substance, this approved substance, right? Then they're basically approving all substances

because there's no way if you're on the mound and they're like, are you using the right pine tar? Yes, I am. And like, well, let me check the chemical composition of this substance you have on your finger that looks like pine tar. Uh-oh, it has Coca-Cola in it. You're out. You know? Right.

You know? But the one thing I would say is I think I would rather they just said you can do whatever and had it on the books that way. and had it on the books that way because I just hate the idea that we could be in a World Series game seven and somebody could say, this is enough. There's enough on the line here. Go get Walker Bueller. Go look at his fingers. Go get Clayton Kershaw. Go look at his fingers. I care enough about winning this game that I'm going to try and get Clayton Kershaw out in the first inning. And the umpire, who is probably more like us being like, eh, what are you gonna do? They all do it. Is going to have to, is going to look at that, that coach and be like, really? That manager and be like, really? You're going to make me go out there right now? And he's going to

go out there and he's going to have to, he's going to see it. He's going to have to be like, sorry, son, you know, he asked me to, so you're out. And, you know, like how terrible a moment would that be for baseball? Well, here's the thing that you brought up, though, is what incentive does MLB have to legalize it? Because, one, they're in knee deep with Rawlings. They own part of Rawlings, too, people were saying. Not only do they have a contract with Rawlings, they own part of Rawlings. So for them to say, you know what? These balls are not that great. Use whatever you want

on your fingers, guys. Whatever makes it better. Right? That doesn't help them. Also, if this becomes a cheating scandal and they have to act

like they had nothing to do with it, then they can't legalize it. Right? They need to remain that distant from it where they're like, well, we tried to stop

this years ago, remember? So they're in this weird situation where I don't think it gets legalized, but I agree with you. If the hitters can use it, then the pitchers can use it. Just let everybody use it.

Like, honestly, at this point in time, they're all doing it anyway. But it is interesting that the names that are coming out and the people are acting shocked. I, for one, am not shocked. I'd be shocked if those Verlander, Scherzer, Coles were not using something.

Come on. For all the people that you think, oh, it's obvious. Like Craig Kimbrell, we've all seen his hat. There are obvious guys. I implore, I would say try to watch a game and try to find 7 out of 10 pitchers.

I don't think you'll find it because people are actually pretty smart about this. There are clear sticky substances. Now there are clear ones. There are, you can do the belt buckle. You can do behind the hair. You,

you know, there's all these places you can hide it. So I, I like short of like what I said in the article, an MMA style check-in where you're actually touching the pitcher all over his body on the mound. Does that seem like baseball to you? That would be so weird. You could just load up after the inning.

You could just go into the tunnel and just load up on him. Yeah, so you have to do it every inning. So every inning, every pitching change, the umpire would have to go to the mound and touch the pitcher all over his face and head and armpits and belt. Like, imagine, I don't do this very often, like, what would I explain to my kid? I understand, I could explain to my kid what was going on, but it would be weird. You sit there with your kid, and he's like,

Dad, why is the umpire feeling up the pitcher? Well, son. Yeah. Young Sheldon pops onto the screen to explain how spin rate works and how it's increased with various substances. On the Nickelodeon telecast. Yeah.

Awkward moments with young Sheldon. There was a related tweet to all this. Mark Carrigg yesterday retweeted, there was a headline about the Earth spinning faster than it has in five decades. He just retweeted it and wrote headline about the earth spinning faster than it has in five decades and he just retweeted it and wrote I blame the sticky stuff which seemed very appropriate given

all we've been talking about here a couple mailbag questions to get to at least one that we can squeeze in before we sign off this one came in a little while ago from Robert he wrote there's been a lot of reference to the Mets new owner Steve Cohen and his massive wealth my question is what does his wealth matter in regards to payroll?

Can he spend his own money? Does his wealth give him an advantage? I think my answer to this question is not entirely because he can just use the luxury tax as an excuse not to spend more of his money, but there's not a rule that says that owners can't just spend as much as they want, right? There's nothing on the books preventing you from running a $400 million payroll if you had the money to actually do it as an owner. I mean, he could get some pressure. I don't know if he owns... I don't think he owns 100%. some pressure. I don't know if he owns, I don't think he owns 100%. He might. What is true of a lot of other places is you have a principal owner who owns more than 50%. Like Charles Johnson here in San Francisco is the principal owner who owns more than 50% or owns the majority. I don't even

know if he owns more than 50%. He might own 36%. Nobody else owns more than 30 or whatever. But if you have an ownership group then yes you have pressure from people around you um and if you're publicly owned like the braves uh then you have pressure from shareholders and sort of corporate style pressure but i think cone is a little bit closer to the old style owns most of the team, can do what he wants with it kind of ownership that is kind of going away. That's part of what's happening in baseball is that there's more sort of corporate style ownership, more ownership groups. And once you have those situations, you have a lot more pressure on trying to take money out of the team every year, trying to make money every year. Whereas before it was, you know,

you might have one owner who was super rich, was okay with losing some money, knew he would get a ton of money on the back end and wanted to win in the meantime, the kind of, you know, the kind of big, big name owners that we remember from the past. So I think Cohen could be a throwback to some of that. He seems to be acting that way a little bit. Yeah, I think that's true. I also think that the individual wealth of an owner, these guys are all wealthy enough to do whatever they want with these payrolls, right? To me, it's more about the mindset of the owner. Do I want to spend the money or do I want to sit there, keep the payroll low and collect the checks like we've all talked about, right? With some of these teams. So to me, yes, he's's wealthy no one that owns a team is not wealthy

um as you said having most of the control certainly helps but i also think he just wants to win and that's going away right how often do we it was refreshing in his press conference for him to say we want to win a world series in three to five years once last time you heard an owner kind of mention that and get as involved as Steve Cohen has with the city, with the team right away? I feel like part of it is also his intent and why we're not screening more owners and trying to embrace guys who have that same intent.

I'm not really sure, right? Like why is Steve Cohen a breath of fresh air? Every owner should approach it like this, but they don't because it's an investment and it's a business and as a business, it makes a breath of fresh air? Every owner should approach it like this, but they don't because it's an investment and it's a business and as a business that makes a lot of money. And I think that what sets Steve Cohen apart is he clearly is a Mets fan and he clearly wants to win. And it's not just him speaking, right? It's not just hollow words. I think he's actually doing that. Yeah. Walking the walk so far. So much of this, though, is like, we're pretty

far removed from this. You know what I mean? Like, the owner, you know, we're learning more about the owner's role in, you know, I don't want to, I'm not going to blow up, Brit's got a piece coming, but we're learning more about the owner's role in sort of day to day operations. And you've heard me talk about what I think are bad owners of being meddlesome owners. But a lot of that is sort of day-to-day operations. And you've heard me talk about what I think are bad owners being meddlesome owners. But a lot of that is sort of reading tea leaves and being like, you know, I think this, and I've heard this from a GM, and, you know, I've heard that Anaheim is a bad ownership position, and I've heard, but, you know, I've heard that Baltimore is a bad ownership situation. But we've seen Mike Elias come in and do some stuff that the previous regime wasn't allowed

to do. So there's obviously some give and take in every situation. I had, this is a great line. I had, I was complaining about somebody to somebody on a team front office, and he told me there are fewer heroes and goats in baseball, in front offices and ownership groups than people would have you believe. So I think that's, the truth is in the middle.

You know, we regress, we make projections, we regress. Everything regresses to the mean. The truth is in the middle too. Like people aren't as bad and as good as people make them out to seem. Like I bet you on some level, Cohen is doing a lot of this stuff publicly

because it's good for his bottom line. You know, it makes him seem like this person that we're talking about. And he understands image and he understands how to maintain an image so um you know there's maybe he's not as cool as we think as he seems so uh we're doing our best to kind of figure that out and we do talk to sources and we do we do know some of these things but um but i also breaking news breaking news this is breaking news x r news, deet, deet, deet, deet, deet. This is breaking news. Ex-Rangers pitcher says Tim Lincecum paid him $1,000

to drink jug of salad dressing. Deet, deet, deet, deet, deet, deet, deet. Breaking news. What flavor salad dressing was it? Yeah, that's critical. This is one of those ones where actually it's going to be cool reading the headline and not reading the story But I'll click for you

I'll click for you DVR Let's see what it was You were curious don't pin this on me It's Tyler Wagner They actually have a check It looks like 12.50 Italian Ew

I mean Is there any salad dressing you'd really want to drink? The easiest would be a vinaigrette. Like a strawberry vinaigrette would be relatively easy. But anything creamy would be bad. This would be so bad for my stomach, I'm pretty sure. Ew, like ranch. This is gross.

There's a picture of him drinking it, and the whole clubhouse is like laughing at him. This is hilarious. Wait, this happened in 2018? Oh my god, yeah. Oh my gosh. That's nuts. It's sort of a reminder that sometimes ball

players are basically the equivalent of high school kids. They just have some resources to egg each other on a bit differently. We did this in high school. We had a yam fest in one of our English classes, gross. And there, of course, was way too much food that high school kids didn't want to eat featuring yams. So there was a kid that said he could eat an entire sweet potato pie, an entire one, a 10-inch from the grocery store, very dense sweet potato pie. And a bunch of us immediately said,

there's no way you're eating that whole thing. It weighs like 10 pounds. No, man, I can eat 20 eggs. It's like, no way, I can do it. And some kid said, I'll give you $100 if you could eat that sweet potato pie, which in high school, if someone says they'll give you $100 if you can complete some kind of feat,

you're going to probably try it. He said, but if you can't do it, you have to pay me 10, which was just the extra little twist of the knife that... He definitely tried, right? He definitely tried. He got about halfway through the pie. He got very sick.

It was very gross. And I think, if I remember correctly, I think the kid that put him up to it felt bad enough to not make the kid pay the $10. I think he let him slide on the 10. But I've seen the salad dressing contest in the form of a sweet potato pie, and it's ugly.

It is really, really ugly. On that note, I think we are going to sign off for the weekend. If you've ever put anybody up to a terrible food feed of strength, let us know. Rates and Barrels at TheAthletic.com. On Twitter, she's at Britt underscore Giroli. He's at Eno Saris.

I am at Derek Van Ryper. If you want to read all about the A1 story that Eno was teasing and giving away earlier on the pod, $3.99 a month is the price to start. Theathletic.com slash ratesandbarrels is the best deal we have going right now, so be sure to sign up. If you don't already have a subscription to The Athletic, check out the pine tar piece that Britt and Eno collaborated on,

as well as the other great stuff that we've got going. So that is going to wrap things up for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We are back with you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening.